Shame / 📷 :Tina Mead
Chicago Crowd Surfer provides a glimpse into the Chicago music scene with all sorts of content. Featuring interviews, premieres, show experiences, and album reviews from Chicago artists and acts touring through our deep scene and storied city.
Added This Week: The end of 2019 brought great shows to Chicago and we’ve got a few for you. Tina and Aaron hit Shame at Empty Bottle and Mick visited local legends The Arrivals at Reggies. Check out both articles below!
Get a Load of: We sat down with Engine Summer ahead of their new project Back-Street Boys and also talked to Rachel Zyzda of ANCHR Magazine, who is celebrated their third anniversary last Saturday with a huge showcase at Schubas featuring the Engine Summer record release! So many choices of weekend activities and it’s just the first one of the year!!
Check Out: Our 2019 Year In Review! In two sections right below! Scroll Down you’ll find it! Check out all the albums and shows we loved in 2019! And we wax nostalgic on the records we thought were influential in the last decade.
Keep Seeing Live Music!
Coming soon . . . Tune in later this week for more reviews of local music and a whole set of New Releases and Fresh Tracks to round out the last of 2019’s releases and the brand new 2020 firsts!
PREVIEW!
Ian’s party
Chop Shop / Subterranean
January 3rd - 5th
The first weekend of a new year is upon us, which means it’s time for Ian’s Party!!! Every year the Chicago rock scene pulls itself out of it’s NYE hangover for a marathon weekend of music at Subterranean and Chop Shop. This year’s lineup is just as hard hitting and decibel pumping as the last several with plenty of return acts and a few brand new ones to get your blood boiling and keep your body temp at full blast through the rest of the brutal winter. We’ve laid out each evening’s schedule in an easily digestible format and if you don’t have tix yet, what are you waiting for! Scoop up three day passes and single day tickets HERE!
Engine Summer
“we found out later there might have been a band that had the same name but they were spelled a little differently, so I think we’re fine. I’ve never head of them.” - Jer
Rachel Zyzda of Anchr magazine
“I stumbled into writing and wanted to do my own thing and didn’t want to pave my way into someone else's thing.” - Rachel Zyzda
⬐ SHOWS ⬎
Shame
Disq / Ethers
Empty Bottle
December 31st
Shame / 📷 : Tina Mead
I got to ring in the New Year with my musical spirit guide, Tina Mead, at the Empty Bottle. The flavors of the evening were Chicago natives Ethers, Madison, Wisconsin mainstays, Disq, and Brits from across the pond, Shame. The crowd was a mixture of young, old, and everything in between. As I scanned the rabble of concert-goers, I could tell something special was afoot this evening...
Sleep
Circuit des Yeux
Thalia Hall
December 29th
Sleep / 📷 : Mark Morrissey
As of writing this article, marijuana is now legal for recreational use in Illinois. There are very few bands that could ring in this occasion quite as fittingly as doom metal legends, Sleep. Without venturing into the bottomless swamp of discussing metal subgenres, from which the only escape is death, Sleep is one of the founders of the modern sludge/stoner/doom metal movement.
The Arrivals
Sass Dragons / Canadian Rifle
Nightcap
Reggies
December 28th
The Arrivals / 📷 : Mick Reed
One of the many poignant ideas touched on during my interview with Dave Merriman of The Arrivals ahead of their set at Reggies on December 28 (which you can read here), was the extent to which the forces of industry will work their way into your brain and poison your identity. Turn you against yourself. To see yourself as a machine that needs to be fixed, rather than a human being, with thoughts, feelings, and needs. Machines only need fuel and maintenance, and when they are no longer useful, they are discarded. Human beings need sustenance, rest, friendship, and community, and human beings are never replaceable
Influential
Albums of the
2010s
Sometimes there are albums that leave an indelible connection to their time and place. A record that transcends the ordinary and takes on an enchantment all it’s own. In this special section we are taking a look back at the albums that shaped our times. Join us as we wax nostalgic for the music that inspired, bewildered, and changed the direction of the art form over the last decade.
2019
The Year In Review
July - December
Meanwhile in our neck of the urban wilderness, Chicago’s scene flourishes on, as big and bad as ever. The following is a rundown of the records and shows we loved from 2019. Not all of them are from Chicago, but most of the bands featured here toured through our fair metropolis once or twice this year. We at CCS don’t believe in the rank and file systems of the MSM. Instead of numbers and lists, we give you the year as it happened. So here it is dear Surfers, our 2019 Year In Review.
2019
The Year in Review
January - June
2019 closed out a tumultuous decade. The world is at odds over the furthering of the cultural revolution. A cold civil war over values and economic justice fueled by the never ending stream of the information age. A generational battle made all the more noisy by the easily accessible negativity heaped on us all, day in day out, by corporate interests on a quest for the easy buck. So we turn it off, we spurn reaction for meditation, news for art, and unplug our brains from social media and into the groove of music.
Jaimie Branch
(Record Release)
Ben LaMar Gay
Empty Bottle
December 20th
Jaimie Branch / 📷 : Ricardo Adame
I don't go to a lot of jazz shows and this was my first time seeing all of the musicians that graced the Bottle stage Friday night. It was also my first time working with fellow photographer Ricardo Adame. He had seen most of these musicians play in all sorts of ensembles/combinations. I've been hanging out with Ricardo at shows for most of 2019 and hearing about all of these experimental improvisational crazy amazing performances he goes to. When photographers meet at a show you exchange Instagram handles and check out each others shows/work. I knew I wanted to be Ricardo's friend when I saw his photo of someone swimming in a pool with a cello. He obviously had knowledge of things happening in Chicago I had no clue about. He has been enriching my experience of the Chicago Music scene ever since. So when Kyle recommended I cover this show and knowing that Ricardo was going, I saw a perfect opportunity to pull Ricardo's work into the Chicago Crowd Surfer arena.
Lingua Ignota
Oozing Wound
Thalia Hall
December 21st
The always decorated Thalia signboard / 📷 : Mick Reed
With the solstice in full transition and the sun slowly coming back to life, it’s a good time for reflection and contemplation of the year behind us. Sometimes this calls for a mug of hot cocoa, a blanket nest perched on the couch, a book of ghost stories and a three hour Enya playlist, and sometimes it calls for being shocked back to your senses by depictions of cruelty and a confrontation with the abuse heaped upon us by those who purportedly care the most. On December 21, 2019, I chose the latter and I don’t regret it. I have the rest the year to get cozy with my partner in my living room. Sometimes it’s better to feel the heat of someone else burning off their gas-lighting to remind you of the validity of your own emotions. It helps keep things in perspective.
Richard Album
Dream Version / Melkbelly
Brent Penny
Big Forever
December 13th
Richard Album / 📷 : Tina Mead
Luck be a lady this past Friday the 13th. She landed me at Big Forever in Humboldt Park, a Chicago DIY space made possible by Richard Album and dedicated to fostering creativity and community. The theme for the night was “heaven” as I walked in during shoegaze aficionado, Brent Penny perfectly working his way through melodic interludes and trading off synths and guitars.
Elijah Berlow
Daymaker
Cordoba
Coles
December 13th
Elijah Berlow / 📷 : Tina Mead
Chicago has an incredibly eclectic scene, brimming with bands from every possible spectrum of musical tastes and influences. Quite often a bill comes along that is shaped by this diversification, containing little to tie together the acts beyond respect for each others art and the community ties. The no frills, classic Chicago back room venue of Coles featured such a lineup last Friday with the jazzy protest anthems of Cordoba, followed by the post-punk rattle and verve of Daymaker, and wrapped all up with the personal folk/bluegrass jams of Elijah Berlow. It was a night to remember, on an unusually un-fridged mid-December Chicago evening, as local music fans packed into the cozy rear room to take in three of the cities most engrossing acts.
Forever Deaf Fest
Beat Kitchen and Cobra Lounge
December 5th - 7th
Matianak / 📷 : Mick Reed
If one of your New Year’s resolutions was to go deaf, than Nick Fury and the organizers of Forever Deaf Fest would have had you covered this past weekend. This was the second year of the Fest which germinated from the idea; what if Open Air but not dead? Well, they certainly had the “not dead” covered with a full slate of local and local-ish death, doom, and post-metal to keep your heart pumping and your blood hot enough to stave off frostbite during another relentless Chicago winter. FDF took over the Beat Kitchen on December 6th and 7th after kicking off at the Cobra Lounge on the 5th. I wasn’t able to see all of it due to work and familial obligations, but metal is for the working man, and I saw enough to say definitively that I will be dropping in on FDF 2020 whether I am graced with a press pass or not.
Iconic
Emily Blue / Carlile / Girlboifriend
Thair / SuperKnova / Flora
Schubas
December 6th
Emily Blue / 📷 : Tina Mead
Six LGBTQ+ performers came together to create Iconic, a showcase benefitting Brave Space Alliance. Brave Space is a black-led LGBTQ center on the south side of Chicago. It is a vibrant community of support far from Schubas, but sometimes spreading the word to further corners of the city can be a great way for a non-profit to improve their reach and impact. I was glad to learn about their work, but even more grateful for a reason to see this not-to-miss lineup.
Tasha
V.V. Lightbody
Bunny
Lincoln Hall
November 30th
Tasha / 📷 : Kyle Land
With belly’s full of festive nosh and spirits awash in familiar and friendship festivities, an eclectic crowd of music lovers descended on Lincoln Hall Thanksgiving Saturday for an evening of local singer/songwriters that turned into a must see event as softly churning Bunny, unmistakably witty V.V. Lightbody, and the unforgettable Tasha put on show that will live on in memory for years as a stirring and beautiful night
NEWS & NOTES
Check out the brand spanking new video from Daymaker!!!
New video from excellent local weirdos Woongi for their track “Green M&M’s”! It’s as odd as they are and super holiday appropriate. (We mean weirdos in the most affectionate and awe inspired way)
See you at the show Chicago!